


Yet to be Won

by meteoritecrater



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-14 23:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3429986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meteoritecrater/pseuds/meteoritecrater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a war, like all other wars: painful and vast, fought on scars and hope - yet to be won.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yet to be Won

**Author's Note:**

> I will be retconned in record time, but here, have a quick fic before the ep comes out. Thanks to aeveee for the beta, and all you other assholes for talking about it until I had to join you in this fandom death spiral.

There is a war, like all other wars: painful and vast, fought on scars and hope - yet to be won. There is a knife wound under her ribs itching to form a scab, and a fresh one burning on her thigh. There are maps, and plans, and designs of machinery that are beyond Lexa’s understanding of her world. Her army is torn to breaking point, and there is no respite in a camp sleeping next to neighbours eager to bleed them not a week before.

Lexa lies still, breathing evenly, knowing that restless movement will not help her reach sleep.

The Sky People burnt her warriors to bone, but one of the warriors sleeping outside used to be a Queen who thought she knew her. One of the warriors now guarding her tent tortured someone who used to sleep here beside her.

The Ice Nation became her people - the Sky People would follow.

This is just a war, like all other wars. The Sky People are no different.

Except--

She feels the weight of her eyelids, and dreams in flashes of bright hair, and blood; smiles, and death screams; moments stolen from her, and moments yet to be stolen.

**

Clarke braids as she walks. Her hair leaves the tang of blood and mud in her mouth, and she spits out the end, tying it off with a piece of fabric. She makes her way through the cold shadow of pre-dawn, stepping over the remains of last night’s feast.

The guard posted outside Lexa’s tent has become used to her presence; enough to let her through without taking her gun. Everyone she’s passed has been clutching their weapons tighter this morning. Despite the hour there’s a hum of tension in the air, the nervous twitching of a large animal, hungry and ready to pounce.

The flap of leather shuts behind her, breezing fresh cold into the tent. Lexa looks up, fine eyebrows arching at her, and Clarke’s eyes dip down skin and more skin. She turns suddenly, the chill fading from her as her blood rises. “Oh. I-- your guard let me in.”

“It is not yet dawn.” Clarke studies the stitching of the tent flap as clothes rustle behind her. Dawn seems to be more of a general... event, than a time. It lasts far longer than Clarke would have expected - the lightburst colours described by the poets struggle in the dank forest around them, melting instead into a grey twilight that slowly burns through the mist. She hasn’t yet discovered what exact time the Grounders use the word ‘dawn’ to mean. The way she’s used to measuring time, dawn has been coming a little later each day.

She doesn’t explain this, clearing her throat instead. “Are you…?” There’s no response, and when she chances a look over her shoulder, Lexa is watching her. She’s clothed now but her armour is still to one side, and Clarke can feel her cheeks, hot against the morning air. Even without her armour and war paint Lexa looks every inch the Grounder Commander; in the tilt of her head as she watches her and the shape of her stance, there’s something predatory that does nothing to settle the nerves of their last moments before battle.  “I’m sorry.”

“We have much to do this morning, there is nothing to apologise for. Are your people ready?”

“Yes,” Clarke says, though she knows they could do more if they had time. There always seems to be more that they could do, but the line had to be drawn somewhere. They’ve done everything necessary. Raven has worked magic with the few components she had, stretching out the materials into what should be enough to remove the Reapers from battle. Octavia has been learning at Indra’s side, and Clarke hopes it’s enough to keep her from getting herself killed. Bellamy sent her a radio message no less than an hour ago to let her know that they were ready inside Mount Weather - until someone discovers their actions. They had no more time.  “The acid fog has been disabled. Your army is standing with our people inside.”

“Then we go.” Lexa calls to a man outside, and a pot of warpaint is brought in and placed on the table next to her. Clarke takes her bundle of maps from Lexa’s collection, but her eyes are on Lexa’s movement as she pulls on her armour with painstaking slowness.

Clarke thought she would be struggling with her fear this morning, but all she has left is a grim anger and a burning need to free the friends who are counting on her. She watches Lexa triple check the ties of her armour, thinking of Bellamy’s face if Octavia doesn’t return today, Octavia if her plan ends in Bellamy’s death. Raven, and Finn.

“Is it even possible-” Clarke stops. There isn’t time for this. Though Lexa is tugging at a buckle with alarming strength, there’s a gentle question in the way her eyes are focused on her, and it makes Clarke set down the map.

“Is it even possible to still be friends with the people you command?” The word used to sit strangely on her tongue, but it’s settling over her with a weight that she can’t think about now. Not until the Mountain Men are dead.

“You are seeking an answer you know is not there, Clarke.”

Clarke nods, because she’s right, because her friends are unlikely to be her friends after she’s sent them out, one by one, to die for each other.

“When you are leading a people, you must make decisions that are not based on love.” There’s a bitter knowledge to her words, and Clarke’s breath aches in her lungs as she sees the memory of a death twist the conversation into a place that takes every bit of softness from her.

Clarke waits for Lexa to stop looking through her, to someone who once was more than just a hard pain in her eyes, until she answers. “I’m not talking about love, I’m talking about my friends.”

“Do you not love your friends?”

“I care about them. Some of them will die today, and at the end of it I’m the one people will blame.”

“Yes,” Lexa says simply. “Your friends will still care for you when you lead, but they will love you as your warriors, as their commander. It is right.”

Clarke opens her mouth, shuts it. She traces a line on the map, and only notices when her finger reaches Mount Weather that it’s the path her team will take through the mountains in less than an hour. Lexa stills as she finishes putting on her armour, and when she looks up from the map Lexa’s face is bare and naked but for the sun between her eyes.

“It is a hard transition to make,” Lexa says quietly. She pauses, and her mouth firms in the same manner as when she turns to address her army. Clarke almost turns to follow her out, but there’s an intensity to her silence that stops her. Lexa opens her mouth to speak, takes a breath and says, her words clipped and slow, “But we do not need to do it alone.”

Lexa reaches, and Clarke feels her breath hitch in a way that they definitely don’t have time for. Instead, Lexa picks up the pot of ash and twists it over in her hands. When she offers it, it’s with a sudden decision of movement that makes Clarke take a step back.

“Help me with my warpaint.”

It’s a command, but her voice is low, and there’s a weight of significance in it that Clarke doesn’t understand. “I wouldn’t know how-”

“You have seen me in battle. You know how it needs to be done. Or have you not been paying attention?”

Lexa’s smile is lazy, but she stands with a wary sharpness that has Clarke stepping close, her fingers dipping in the pot Lexa still holds. “I’ve been paying attention,” she says, her eyes flicking up to catch with Lexa’s before she has a chance to close them.

The ash paste had been sitting outside in the wind, and its sticky chill feels foreign against her fingers until she draws it across Lexa’s skin. Clarke tries to emulate the fierce patterns she’s seen her wear, tries not to take advantage of her closed eyes to let herself take in the sweep of her throat. Her breathing is even, but Clarke steadies the movement of her fingers with a hand to her collar, and she can feel her pulse beat, quick and strong under her fingertips. There’s a trust to this moment that’s important to the battle before them, and Clarke tries not to think beyond that to the warmth under her palm.

Clarke starts to speak, lets her fingers rest for a moment before she can. “Is that okay?”

Lexa opens her eyes, and they’re bright and too close, and Clarke is torn between swaying away and towards her.

“I can’t see it,” Lexa points out, her lips twisting to hide a smile as Clarke fumbles with that.

“Oh. Right.” She clears her throat, and Lexa looks at her, like she has a part to play and she has yet to say her line.

The kiss is swift, and it gets caught in between them like Lexa wanted to steal something Clarke was trying to give freely. When Clarke jerks back, Lexa’s eyes are gleaming at her.

“You may not want to be in command, but if you want to help your people survive, you will be what your people need, and you will command them well. You may not end the day with as many friends, but you will have your people. Together, we will free them of the Mountain Men.”

 _Now_ Lexa looks ready to leave, like that’s all she wanted to impress upon her before the battle began and the kiss was just -- emphasis, or something, but Clarke doesn’t step back, searching across her face, and, _there_.

“Maybe life should be about more than just surviving,” Clarke says, and this time when Lexa’s lips meet hers it’s a long moment of warmth that neither one of them denies. Lexa makes a sound and Clarke breathes it in, shivering as her fingers curl in her hair. Clarke’s hand smoothes across her shoulder, leaving a trail of ash paste she’d forgotten was still on her.

“Oh,” Lexa says, looking at the marks across her shoulder. Clarke steps back, alarmed.

“Did I ruin it?”

“No,” Lexa says. “It is yours, to do as you like with.”

Clarke doesn’t know how much of this is some form of warpaint Grounder culture that she’s accidentally become tangled in, or if it’s less to do with tradition and more for them, but either way - “It’s light out,” Clarke manages. “We should-”

Lexa nods, sheathing the last of her weapons. Clarke rolls her maps, putting them into a loop on her belt and ducking out of the tent before Lexa can come any closer.

She was not at all prepared for this - the kick in her breath as Lexa’s arm brushes past hers on the way out of the tent, the look Lexa shoots her as they make their way towards the meeting point.

Their plan for the battle ahead seems very well formulated in comparison.

**

Lexa’s army shifts with barely contained energy around her. Some of her people will die today, but they will be good deaths, in a necessary war. Clarke waves to the Sky People as they crest the hill towards them, and Lexa knows that she may be one of their number.

For a moment, Lexa breathes, looks to the mountain path and sees eyes that were just as dark: remembers them joy-bright; death-dim.

If Clarke dies, this battle will have been no less necessary.

Clarke hands one of her seconds a map; her hair seems to pull the sunlight towards it, and Lexa feels a dangerous hope tingle along her nerves. Distractions are not to be conceded, but she fights for every one of her people, and a new face to fight for will only make her fiercer today.

There is a war, like no other war - painful and vast, fought on scars and hope: a woman yet to be won.


End file.
